Speaker 1: Quest Left Show is a production of iHeart Radio, Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to a q OLS short, not exactly in all
Speaker 2: the way Full Epp of Quest Left Supreme. We know
Speaker 2: my penchant for talking, so I'll say it's just short
Speaker 2: and then next thing you know, it's four hours later
Speaker 2: and uh we're still talking. First of all, thank you
Speaker 2: for all the feedback that we've gotten on the shows
Speaker 2: in the past year. And there's a particular episode ThunderCats.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm still falling down the anime rabbit hole. By
Speaker 2: the way, I'm here joined by the one that only
Speaker 2: opened my ego, So say a load to the people
Speaker 2: of Mike.
Speaker 3: Hey.
Speaker 2: All right, So basically we were speaking of ThunderCats, Shane
Speaker 2: his MF Doom Cheam, and you know he praised Hans
Speaker 2: Solo for designing his jewelry, and yes he misspoke about
Speaker 2: the creator of the MF Doom mask and uh, Dante
Speaker 2: Ross and classic Dante Ross.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: I felt like I was bringing a home of bad
Speaker 2: report cards and I was like, wait, what did I do?
Speaker 4: What did I do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, Dante Ross and others to pointed out,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm big on correcting history and speaking
Speaker 2: of history, So of course I immediately wanted to perhaps
Speaker 2: do a correction episode. And of course there was no
Speaker 2: mause or harmon foul in our misinformation.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're living in a time where a.
Speaker 2: Lot of misinformation gets passed on and no one ever
Speaker 2: corrects it. So yes, even us at the Quest Left
Speaker 2: Show are big enough to say, hey, are bad.
Speaker 1: We want to make it right. So as a result,
Speaker 1: we want to bring.
Speaker 2: The actual creator of the do Mask and hopefully in
Speaker 2: this little mini episode, really really get proper context on
Speaker 2: an item that we've talked about and heard about for years.
Speaker 2: First of all, Kiels, good sir, welcome to this short
Speaker 2: How are you today?
Speaker 4: Thank you man, It's an honor to be here. I'm man,
Speaker 4: I'm blessed to be alive. I'm grateful. You know what
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Thank.
Speaker 4: You guys as well as well.
Speaker 1: Absolutely we are. So where should we start, Mike.
Speaker 3: I mean so I think we should start where you
Speaker 3: just sort of set the table. Thundercap misattributed the creation
Speaker 3: of the mask, and it's such an iconic design, recognizable everywhere,
Speaker 3: and as much as you know you remember, I would
Speaker 3: love to just hear about how that all came together
Speaker 3: to begin with.
Speaker 4: So first of all, let me just start by saying, yeah,
Speaker 4: I worked on the Mask, both the early version and
Speaker 4: the later Gladiator version that most people know. But bigger
Speaker 4: than that doing was my brother Man. I loved that Cat.
Speaker 4: I did his first album cover as MF Doom, which
Speaker 4: is called Operation Doomsday. I designed his logo I did.
Speaker 4: The next one we did was recreate kmd's Black Bastard.
Speaker 4: We did the all the special herbs, basically anything on
Speaker 4: Metal Face Records. And I'm talking about MF Grim's down
Speaker 4: Fall of v bleas the Monster Island Czars rot Dan's
Speaker 4: first album. All of that I was blessed to be
Speaker 4: a part of. And Doom stayed in my house. I
Speaker 4: later stayed at his crib in Atlanta, and when he
Speaker 4: was overseas, he knew my daughter, I know his kids.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean. That's family. So I don't
Speaker 4: want to argue with anyone about who did what or
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. There's no real status in that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because I'm doing new things. I'm currently and I still
Speaker 4: work with Jasmine, Doom's widow and the estate, and you know,
Speaker 4: like we just did this and then the next one. Yes,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. So these were things that
Speaker 4: Doom and I planned while he was still here in
Speaker 4: the physical. We talked about certain color ways and he okay, okay,
Speaker 4: we're gonna do the blue and orange, and we're gonna
Speaker 4: do the black and silver, and we're gonna keep it
Speaker 4: like you know what I mean. And then we had
Speaker 4: alternative so we discussed rollout for albums and merch and
Speaker 4: things that are still in the works. So it's bigger
Speaker 4: than just the mask. But yes, I had a hand
Speaker 4: in conceiving of his first mask because he knew that
Speaker 4: he wanted to like a graffiti writer, and he came
Speaker 4: from a graffiti background and mentality. He wanted to keep
Speaker 4: a level of anonymity, so you recognize the artwork, you're
Speaker 4: a fan, but you I don't know the personality behind it.
Speaker 4: At the time, when Barbito was putting together the album
Speaker 4: and Bob had never done artwork before. He always had
Speaker 4: white label, Fondulum was just singles in a white sleep.
Speaker 4: This was a new thing, a special thing. Around that time,
Speaker 4: the WU had come out and ghost Face was seen
Speaker 4: wearing a white stocking mask. A Cantyhope, you know, like
Speaker 4: you would rob a banquet, and Doom was like, Yo,
Speaker 4: that's fly. I need something like.
Speaker 3: That because in Doom's early appearances at like New yurekn
Speaker 3: he covered his face similarly with a stocking correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sometimes he wore a bandana, like you know Jesse
Speaker 4: James robbing a train. Sometimes he wore a stocking mask.
Speaker 4: But we were actively working to develop something unique to
Speaker 4: Doom and his persona that would allow him because he
Speaker 4: liked to go to the bar and sit there and
Speaker 4: and be a regular dude. And then when he jumped
Speaker 4: on stage, all of a sudden, people are cheering and
Speaker 4: they know the lyrics. But he's sitting next to you
Speaker 4: the whole night and nobody bothers. Now. I don't know
Speaker 4: if that's because he achieved some level of fame and
Speaker 4: notoriety as a little kid with KMD, and he had
Speaker 4: a taste of what that's like, but you know, fame
Speaker 4: without fortune. I grew up seeing a lot of my
Speaker 4: hip hop heroes riding on a subway train with me. Right,
Speaker 4: somebody assumes you're a star. They may be jealous, they
Speaker 4: might want to try you. They think you have money
Speaker 4: or jewelry that you don't even have, and now you
Speaker 4: have to fight every day or people, you know, even
Speaker 4: as a graffiti writer. And I'm not a famous dude.
Speaker 4: I'm relatively like under the radar. I don't have a
Speaker 4: Wikipedia page or anything. I walk down the street and
Speaker 4: people call me out by my name that I don't know.
Speaker 4: They're like, yo, I follow you on instan Gram and
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, well, what's your name? State your name?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, Like, let's start with that.
Speaker 4: Introduce yourself. It's awkward. So I understand Doom's desire to
Speaker 4: just be able to create, produce music without being a
Speaker 4: public figure the target. Yeah, and he's still to this
Speaker 4: day people want to deify him and speculate on you know, try.
Speaker 4: I get questions all the time, and I'm just like, yo, man,
Speaker 4: he was a regular dude. That's my man. Like, you know,
Speaker 4: he was about feeding his family and all the things
Speaker 4: that you know, when we deify somebody, we almost separate ourselves.
Speaker 4: You know what Doom did, You can do? You know
Speaker 4: what quest love does you And I'm talking to the
Speaker 4: kids watching out there, mhmm. You can create your own
Speaker 4: universe and artwork and do all these amazing things and
Speaker 4: still be a regular guy.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: You know, I grew up in hip hop, and a
Speaker 4: lot of the cats that I knew and worked with,
Speaker 4: whether through graffiti, m seeing, dancing, they went on to
Speaker 4: start them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: So I went to high School of Music and Art
Speaker 4: request I believe he went to a similar school.
Speaker 1: In Philly, Yes, Philly, right.
Speaker 4: So it's a public school, it's poor kids, it's kids
Speaker 4: from middle class backgrounds, kids from the project, but everyone
Speaker 4: had a talent and a creativity.
Speaker 1: Was this in New York City, Harlem?
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred and thirty seventh at Convent Avenue.
Speaker 1: Oh so it wasn't.
Speaker 2: I wasn't then impression that Laguardio was the only performing
Speaker 2: arts school in New York.
Speaker 1: There was one in Harlem as well.
Speaker 4: It was originally two sister schools, one called Performing Arts,
Speaker 4: about which the movie and television show Fame was made
Speaker 4: with more about stage and dancing, all those kind of things.
Speaker 4: And then the sister school, which was up on City
Speaker 4: College campus, was called Music and Art, and we had
Speaker 4: a fine arts program, and we had an instrumental and
Speaker 4: vocal music program. So ard Wright went there. The drummer
Speaker 4: Mackie from the Crow Mags was their scheme. You know,
Speaker 4: the Kango Crew. My brothers, Dana, Dane, like Rick, they
Speaker 4: were in class with me. We used to battle every
Speaker 4: day in the lunch they went there. Damn the fresh
Speaker 4: three mcs f r s. They were just ones to
Speaker 4: have records out of that school. Okay, you know a
Speaker 4: jazz musician's famous old manner of creatives were there.
Speaker 1: I never knew that.
Speaker 4: Bernard Wright went to my high school. What rest in peace. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he was a little older than me. He was vacating
Speaker 4: when I was coming in as a freshman because I
Speaker 4: got there in nineteen eighty eighty to eighty one, Planning
Speaker 4: got murdered. Okay, So mc searched talks about seeing me
Speaker 4: battling the Kango Crew at the lunch table and it
Speaker 4: inspiring him to believe that he could do this thing.
Speaker 4: Before he was empcy search. He didn't have a name.
Speaker 4: He was just Michael Baron and okay, he always bigs
Speaker 4: me up for inspiring him. So I want people to
Speaker 4: understand that whatever Doom did, he's a regular cat and
Speaker 4: you can do that too. Don't don't disqualify yourself because
Speaker 4: in the era I came from we were all just creating.
Speaker 4: We didn't have social media, we didn't have institutions behind us,
Speaker 4: money back in corporate nothing. We just made art for
Speaker 4: art's sake.
Speaker 2: How many versions of that mask were like as far
Speaker 2: as the evolution of it were there four different stages
Speaker 2: of that mask or so.
Speaker 4: The first mask which you see in the first three
Speaker 4: music videos which were shot might buy a cat name
Speaker 4: Adam Baala Lowe okay, and he went on to be
Speaker 4: a big documentary filmmaker. You can check him out. I
Speaker 4: know you're a documentary okay yourself. So he was at
Speaker 4: NYU film student at the time. I don't know where
Speaker 4: Doom met him, but you know, Doom had a way
Speaker 4: of attracting talent and getting cats on board. So they
Speaker 4: did these first three music videos for free question Mark
Speaker 4: with featuring Curious, which we shot in in Sunset Park
Speaker 4: in Brooklyn. That mask was cheap plastic, like one of
Speaker 4: these halloween things you had when you were a kid,
Speaker 4: with a rubber band in the back. And I spray
Speaker 4: painted it with rustolium aluminum spray paint, and I drew
Speaker 4: the details with a marker and I cut it with
Speaker 4: a razor blade to the right shape. That one did
Speaker 4: not last. In fact, at that video shoot in Sunset
Speaker 4: Part after they cut, he set it on the bench
Speaker 4: next to him. Everyone was drinking Jack Daniels, right, someone,
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna mention the name sat on the mask
Speaker 4: and the things it split across the nose and eyebrow.
Speaker 4: So Doom brought it back to me to my studio
Speaker 4: which is in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and he wanted me
Speaker 4: to try and repair it, and we began discussing. He
Speaker 4: was like, yo, I need something solid man.
Speaker 3: Sorry to interrupt that there is a new design. You know,
Speaker 3: the perception of it was that that one was more
Speaker 3: directly informed by Doctor Doom. The Doctor Doom mass from Marvel.
Speaker 3: Is that is that correct?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was my inspiration. I drew little rivets on
Speaker 4: it and certain shading. You know. Jack Kirby had a
Speaker 4: way of very simply illustrating metal and mechanical thing that
Speaker 4: you know, people still try to get to this day.
Speaker 4: And it resonated with graffiti riders because it was thick
Speaker 4: black outlines and it was something you could do with
Speaker 4: spray paint, you understand. So yeah, there was a lot
Speaker 4: of that in there on Marvel, Disney please do not
Speaker 4: come from me. We created own. This was a unique construction. Okay,
Speaker 4: it's Mikey Mouse, it ain't Mickey got you. So after
Speaker 4: that one split, we got the idea that you know,
Speaker 4: we were running around Lower Manhattan. Barbito used to live
Speaker 4: on fourteenth Street and the shop was on ninth Street,
Speaker 4: and we shot my favorite Ladies video on Second Avenue.
Speaker 4: It was all the East Village we were running around.
Speaker 4: You know, they were the first show's doom ever did.
Speaker 4: Were at Brownies and the Pyramid, these little l e
Speaker 4: s alphabet city punk rock clubs. Right. They had a
Speaker 4: lot of antique stores over there, and curio shops and
Speaker 4: shops that sold you know. There was an entire place
Speaker 4: on Houseton where it comes to a triangle near first
Speaker 4: that was an outdoor you know, it was covered like
Speaker 4: a tent and they had everything, signs from the subway
Speaker 4: and basically whatever you could want. So I said, maybe
Speaker 4: we can find a suit of armor. Somebody's got an
Speaker 4: actual medieval suit of armor and we could use that
Speaker 4: that as the basis. While we were running around, we
Speaker 4: didn't find anything suitable. We passed a place called Forbidden Planet,
Speaker 4: which is a huge comic book store on Broadway, like
Speaker 4: twelve or thirteenth when you're going uptown towards Union Square.
Speaker 4: They got the whole block with a wrap around window.
Speaker 4: Me and Doom were both comic book heads, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, since kids, and a movie had just
Speaker 4: come out with Russell Crowe called Gladiator, and we had
Speaker 4: never seen the film. We didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 4: We didn't know who Russell Crowe was, but we saw
Speaker 4: the mask. It was like a souvenir of a gladiator
Speaker 4: helmet which had a big fin on the top and
Speaker 4: spikes sticking out that metal. You know. It was a
Speaker 4: full full helmet, and it was wouldn't stand in the window,
Speaker 4: and I was like, yo, that. So we bagged that
Speaker 4: up and I took the face plate off, which was
Speaker 4: hinged right here so it could swing like a motorcycle helmet,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, and discarded the rest and
Speaker 4: we just worked with that metal face plate. And I
Speaker 4: took it to a cat I knew who did sculpture
Speaker 4: and had some welding tools, and we made certain modifications
Speaker 4: so that he could wear it comfortably. And it had
Speaker 4: the inside of a construction worker's helmet. There's like a
Speaker 4: fitted plastic you know, like in the back of a
Speaker 4: fitted cap adjustable, there's this webbing that your construction helmet
Speaker 4: sits on it, so it doesn't actually sit on your head.
Speaker 4: It floats, right. So we just took that webing and
Speaker 4: we put two school holes and we have fixed the
Speaker 4: first version of the metal mask to that, and Doom
Speaker 4: rocked with that for a long time. And it also
Speaker 4: served as a weapon. You could hold it, you know
Speaker 4: when we start going to bigger venues sobs and bb
Speaker 4: Kings which is no longer raven They used to metal
Speaker 4: detect you. They used to search you to get in.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask about airports, but good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. So he had a case made for the
Speaker 4: mask and he could listen, I'm performing this is part
Speaker 4: of my boom boom boom. They would let him in.
Speaker 4: But if you held that thing by the back of
Speaker 4: the straps and you caught somebody with it, it not
Speaker 4: only weighed about seven pounds, it was stainless steel and
Speaker 4: those two tusks were sharp, right, So I've seen dudes
Speaker 4: try to jump on stage and Doom catch him with
Speaker 4: that and boom. It's a rap. So it served many purposes,
Speaker 4: And there were days when and I don't want to
Speaker 4: snitch doom. It is no longer here, so he's immune
Speaker 4: to prosecution. You know. He was a creative dude, but
Speaker 4: he wasn't soft by any means. Okay, that's a lot
Speaker 4: of people think nerd rap or something. No, a nerd
Speaker 4: is a sucker. You can be well read, you can
Speaker 4: be into many many aspects of culture and history and
Speaker 4: religion and sciences and mathematics and still not be soft. Okay.
Speaker 4: So there were times when we had to sneak weapons
Speaker 4: into the club, and he made a case with a phone.
Speaker 4: You know, if you purchased the gun, what it would
Speaker 4: come in a hard case as a microphone is carried
Speaker 4: that way or an instrument. It has a foam cut
Speaker 4: out for the mask. So the weapons went under the
Speaker 4: mask so we could get through the metal detector and say,
Speaker 4: hey man, it's just it's my costume. Understanding there'd be
Speaker 4: a little twenty five automatic inside of BB King's Okay.
Speaker 4: So yeah, the mass served many purposes. What happened it
Speaker 4: became totally corroded and rusted.
Speaker 3: The second version did it became the metal?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So first he got it re chrome and he
Speaker 4: purchased a couple more so he had backup versions. He
Speaker 4: put a ruby right here at the third eye. He
Speaker 4: also added on the interior a whole lot of different
Speaker 4: minerals and uh, crystals and things which which held certain
Speaker 4: power to him. Okay, okay, and herbs and he was
Speaker 4: very into you know, esoteric sciences and natural you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so he told me the mask was uncomfortable the rock
Speaker 4: for hours. So he puts some copper in there, and
Speaker 4: copper has a a healing property. I don't know a
Speaker 4: lot about these things. Wow, So yeah, he made he
Speaker 4: made a lot of modifications, as a gold plated one. Okay,
Speaker 4: there was the silver version which he got re chromed
Speaker 4: and added a ruby. So there've probably been at least
Speaker 4: four versions of the metal mask, which was based on Gladiator.
Speaker 4: It was okay mask, but the original mask I still
Speaker 4: have the We attempted to repair it, but it's it's broken.
Speaker 4: But that's that's the first dum Masking to me, was
Speaker 4: a superior visual. Maybe it wasn't as thirty, but it
Speaker 4: is amazing, you know what I mean. So the funny
Speaker 4: thing now, they just made a reboot of Gladiator, the
Speaker 4: movie they made A part two and all the younger
Speaker 4: kids who don't remember were like, yo, he's wearing a.
Speaker 1: Doom right now.
Speaker 4: Stole that mask from MF Doom. And I'm thinking, like
Speaker 4: jay Z said he could make a Yankee hat more
Speaker 4: famous than a Yankee cab, right, Yeah, we made that
Speaker 4: mask more popular than a big fucking budget Hollywood studio
Speaker 4: film with stars, and nobody remembers that bullshit.
Speaker 2: Well alog culture, man, it's the absolute like genius marketing device.
Speaker 2: It's so weird because when I first started going to
Speaker 2: Fat Beats and they were trying to give me, They're like, no, man,
Speaker 2: zebha VX has a new character out and this was
Speaker 2: and I was like, why would he? Like I came
Speaker 2: from the school of like, you know, a big giant
Speaker 2: kmdfen and was wondering, like, why is this shrouded in mystery?
Speaker 1: Like show us your face and whatnot? I do have
Speaker 1: to ask.
Speaker 2: So I believe I was witnessed once to a Doom
Speaker 2: show that wasn't a Doom show. Air quotes the specs
Speaker 2: on that look so unique and specific as a one
Speaker 2: off art piece, Howard Katz getting and I'm talking about
Speaker 2: the occasional Doom impostures that were out there.
Speaker 4: So what I know is that Doom had legal issues
Speaker 4: that didn't allow him to travel.
Speaker 1: The travel I get it.
Speaker 4: Okay, he had his man who was this basically his
Speaker 4: same physical stature, right.
Speaker 5: Gotcha, and taught him how to Millie Vanilli this shit
Speaker 5: so that he could appear with the mask on and
Speaker 5: get that money.
Speaker 2: Because that's almost that's almost as legendary as within him
Speaker 2: just being M F.
Speaker 4: Doom.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, right, but.
Speaker 4: We've all gone to shows where half the Wu Tang
Speaker 4: didn't show up, or you know, Lauren Hill was seven
Speaker 4: hours late. So he just found a way to circumvent that.
Speaker 4: If the powers that be didn't want to let him
Speaker 4: into the country, he'd send this man and still get
Speaker 4: that paycheck and two shows on the same night, and
Speaker 4: the fans are happy.
Speaker 2: I was at a couple of and we was not happy.
Speaker 3: But I do so I certainly understand, though, I certainly.
Speaker 4: When I was a kid. When I was a kid,
Speaker 4: I used to go to the Latin Quarters and cats
Speaker 4: had singles out and you never knew what they look like,
Speaker 4: right video, right, So other dudes would show up it's
Speaker 4: your money and promote themselves as being you and I've
Speaker 4: seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just did a day Last solo episode in
Speaker 2: which Macio shares a story about dealing with the fake,
Speaker 2: the fake and the fake BDP.
Speaker 1: So no, I know that can happen.
Speaker 4: My man at the time, and we're talking eighty six.
Speaker 4: My running partner, he was from Brooklyn, but he was cool.
Speaker 4: Keith's cousin right. His name was Roman Geo, so he
Speaker 4: had a lot of game and he got us into
Speaker 4: Club Free, didn't I wasn't even aware he had told
Speaker 4: Mike Goldberg, who owned the Latin Quarters, that I was
Speaker 4: Mike D from the Beastie Boys, so that we could
Speaker 4: get in free. I didn't even know he had done this.
Speaker 4: Now in eighty six, the Beastis have the biggest record
Speaker 4: on the planet, you understand. You know this is why
Speaker 4: I'm so protective today of my IP because I come
Speaker 4: from a time when we didn't have any podcasts, videos, books, There.
Speaker 3: Were no no way to tell y'all story. Really, there were.
Speaker 4: No institutions teaching hip hop. We had to police ourselves.
Speaker 4: I'm very grateful for all all the people that jumped
Speaker 4: into comments and it's like, nah, that was Keio because
Speaker 4: your name was all you had, right, especially as a
Speaker 4: graffiti writer. So we could parody Marvel comics or the
Speaker 4: Kung Fu flicks or even real life historical figure. You
Speaker 4: could claim to be Frank Nitti or Al Capone, but
Speaker 4: you couldn't say you were rock him, right, you understand.
Speaker 4: So in graffiti we would take Mickey Mouse and redraw
Speaker 4: him and give him a blunt and a baseball hat
Speaker 4: or whatever, a gold chain, and that was fly. We
Speaker 4: could bite off of the Disney Corporation or comedy lettering
Speaker 4: from the Serial box or comic or Ajax, right, but
Speaker 4: I could and copy lettering from Dondie. Somebody would call
Speaker 4: me out on it. They say, yo, you bit that?
Speaker 4: Now that seems to go out the window. There's actually
Speaker 4: two rock Kims. Now there's two No, Yes, there's a
Speaker 4: rock Kim who is a reggaetone performer.
Speaker 1: Oh google, Yeah.
Speaker 4: There's two Nazas. There's Little Nas and Big Nas. They're
Speaker 4: both making fucking records at the same time. In my day,
Speaker 4: that would have gone to blows and possibly you know,
Speaker 4: even worse. You would fight to defend your name. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So when somebody comes on and says they created the mask,
Speaker 4: I immediately go to a place of ego and pride
Speaker 4: that I is instilled in me from a kid we battle,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's perfectly understandable.
Speaker 4: Too, But I'm trying to be a little more humble
Speaker 4: and adult about life these days.
Speaker 2: We just wanted to give your flowers, man, and you know,
Speaker 2: definitely correct history and let our let our listeners out there.
Speaker 4: Know because AI is a dangerous thing now. It just
Speaker 4: skims whatever the is on the internet. So if I
Speaker 4: google who made the doom Mask, They're gonna find your
Speaker 4: podcast and it'll say Hancholo created the doom Mask.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm like, Okay, I doubt that's gonna happen now
Speaker 2: because the right way we got dealt.
Speaker 4: But listen, people don't understand how we grew up. Fat
Speaker 4: Joe has a podcast now and all I see is
Speaker 4: people calling a cap and he no way you did
Speaker 4: these things right now. I happen to know Fat Joe was.
Speaker 4: You know, they stuck up my man, Him and Brim
Speaker 4: jumped out the van with a Soto shotgun and took
Speaker 4: their spray paint. This is one Joe had records out.
Speaker 4: He was dudes for spray paint. So when he tells
Speaker 4: the story. I believe him. I know now there's no
Speaker 4: beef anymore. I love Tad's crew by OBG Terror Squad.
Speaker 4: Those are my people, But back then they were dangerous motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 4: But when I go to tell my own life story,
Speaker 4: it sounds crazy that we could leave the house with
Speaker 4: thirty five cents, hop the Turnstown steal spray, paint, rack
Speaker 4: up some forty ounces, rub somebody for their weed coming
Speaker 4: out of the weed spot on myrtle app and then
Speaker 4: wind up the end of the night at the World
Speaker 4: or the Tunnel, partying with Grace Jones and Madonald And
Speaker 4: that was all in one day. I battled, you know,
Speaker 4: I tell people will Yo, I battle Big Daddy Kane
Speaker 4: in Albi Square Mall while Biz was doing the beat
Speaker 4: Box before he had records, and they go, yeah, right,
Speaker 4: sure you did.
Speaker 1: I believe you.
Speaker 4: And I battled Napoleon it fucking water because we didn't
Speaker 4: have a camera the film everything.
Speaker 3: I did want to ask you one more question. I
Speaker 3: know you mentioned for Doom as a person as an artist,
Speaker 3: the importance of the mask is him being able to
Speaker 3: sort of separate his identity as a regular person versus
Speaker 3: who he is on stage. But also think of this, right,
Speaker 3: Like I started listening to Doom when I was seventeen.
Speaker 3: I got a seventeen year old son now, and the
Speaker 3: only artist that I rock with he rock with is Doom,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying. So in a sense, my grandson,
Speaker 3: my grandson is five and loves Doming.
Speaker 4: I didn't put him on and so he found out.
Speaker 3: Doom is one of those few artists that is bigger
Speaker 3: than life, and I do feel like the mask is
Speaker 3: an important part of that. So I'm curious, what do
Speaker 3: you think is the importance of the mask to Doom's legacy.
Speaker 4: You have to understand the current popular climate at that
Speaker 4: time was a lot of pretty boys and really slick,
Speaker 4: high budget videos, dude stancing with their shirt off and
Speaker 4: Doom to him it was like, oh, that's not what
Speaker 4: this is about. It's about wreck, right, how nice you are,
Speaker 4: how nasty you are with the skills. So there were
Speaker 4: dudes who looked a certain way who maybe weren't as skillful.
Speaker 4: You know the story of Martha wash the big woman
Speaker 4: who sang right. Because she was a large sized woman,
Speaker 4: they put models to lip sync for her in the video,
Speaker 4: so that was happening in hip hop. It became more
Speaker 4: about your appearance than your skills. And again, Doom is
Speaker 4: old enough, even though he was far younger than I.
Speaker 4: He remembers an era when you didn't know what you'd
Speaker 4: hear the record, you didn't know what cats looked like.
Speaker 4: It didn't happen. So he wanted to be judged on
Speaker 4: his creative skills, not what he looked like. But honestly,
Speaker 4: and he says it himself, he wasn't a Tom Cruise
Speaker 4: looking dude. He was not a movie star handsome kind
Speaker 4: of cat, and he made no bones about that. Girls
Speaker 4: loved him. He was charming. He had a way to
Speaker 4: talk to females that blew my mind. But you know,
Speaker 4: he says it. A rather ugly brother would flows this
Speaker 4: gorgeous so that he told you why he wears a mask.
Speaker 4: People want to make it something it isn't. It's real simple,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. It's about the creativity, about
Speaker 4: being allowed to be creative, because you got to remember,
Speaker 4: the image on his KMD album cover is the excuse
Speaker 4: that they used to cancel him and his younger brother
Speaker 4: Rest in Peace of Robin because of what it looked like.
Speaker 4: Without ever listening to that, so he wanted to take
Speaker 4: that out. Yo, I might be a black dude, the
Speaker 4: Spanish dude, I might be Chinese under this mask. I
Speaker 4: don't fucking matter.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad we was able to have you in
Speaker 3: hear from you directly, to hear these stories. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, like do It means a
Speaker 3: lot to me, It means a lot to us, And
Speaker 3: it's dope to meet you having contributed such an iconic
Speaker 3: piece of like hip hop art to the world that
Speaker 3: I feel like is gonna outlive all of us.
Speaker 4: May I shout out. What I'm working on right now
Speaker 4: is before we rap. Absolutely So we're doing the Team
Speaker 4: one documentary right now. Stay tuned for that. We're nice,
Speaker 4: Starlene and Redman is in there. Everybody, everybody is.
Speaker 1: In of course. The show is a production of iHeart Radio.